Excise Tax

From a moral standpoint, there is no question that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney should retract opposition to the Obama Administration's 61-cent federal excise tax increase on cigarettes.

The President is outlining what he considers a reasonable resolution of the two bills. Will it work? Consider this: The alternative is no legislation at all.

Zombie ideas -- like the Cadillac tax and trickle-down economics -- are hard to kill. If they sound good to you the first time you hear them, then you fall in love with them.

We had a very frank conversation with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on The Young Turks. We talked about whether it makes sense to reach out to Republi...

Labor leaders are not yet ready to commit to supporting comprehensive health care reform legislation despite meeting with the president to discuss the...

Policy experts are free to represent their Administration. But, like generals testifying before Congress, I believe they also have a responsibility to lay the facts out fully before the American people.

If the end product is an imperfect health care reform bill, one that takes too much from the middle class in order to help those even less fortunate, that won't be what some people wanted. But it will be be an improvement.

The White House and major labor unions are making what one source familiar with the conversations called "big strides" in hammering out an agreement o...

It is unconscionable that workers and families with employer-sponsored health plans would have their health coverage taxed and seriously eroded.

The silver lining, according to many economists who support the Cadillac insurance tax, is that employers will then take the money they're not spending on health care and give it to their workers as wages. That's probably wrong.

If the Washington Post will outsource financial reporting to an anti-spending conservative, why wouldn't they outsource their health reform reporting to ... insurance companies?

Why does anyone think the badly-designed "Cadillac tax" will evolve into something better? The most likely outcome is a backlash that makes genuine cost containment impossible for a generation.

Some of the current bill's provisions are going to hurt the Democrats and will probably cost them seats unless they're removed. How can a smaller group of Democrats do what a bigger group could not?

Two polls in two days found widespread opposition to the insurance tax, and broad support for an income surtax on the wealthiest households. It's pretty clear where the political center is.

The centrist natives of Washington are banding together to defend their faith-based totem: the wildly unpopular excise tax on high-cost health plans.

If Congress and the White House are serious about creating effective reform, they need to pay more attention to how some of these proposals will play out in the actual arena of medical economics.

The so-called (and misnamed) "Cadillac tax" is unfair and unwise. It's also a political landmine for its supporters, and a political goldmine for those who oppose all health reform.

If unions take the deal to exempt union health care plans from the excise tax, they fulfill one of the worst of stereotypes of labor unions: blind self interest.

A lot of the arguments against an excise tax on insurance companies come from those who want to kill health care reform. But a lot of them also come from friends who share my convictions about health care.

However it started, the public option is now a shell of its former self. At best it's opt-out or triggered. You can only get it if you're in the insurance exchange.